A mighty fine idea...

A guy I work with suggested that I put a wireless NIC is my player. The idea is to drive around always searching for 802.11b signals. When it finds one, attempt to pull down a DHCP address which would theoretically give me internet access. During the short spurts of internet access, I can download new mail, get weather forecasts, etc. There's a lot of companies in town with WAPs wide open to anyone with a wiress nic.

Around my house, I probably wouldn't get anything. But downtown and in the areas with all of the software companies=wireless orgy. Sounds very plausible.

Yeah, with you living in Austin and all, shouldn't be to hard to borrow some network time... There has to be something illegal about it, right? maybe? eh, who cares. How would they even track it anyways.
You gotta find or write some software to do some serious packet splitting, if you're driving around, it's going to be dropping into and out of networks in seconds, you'll have to be quick. Maybe you can have your system ship off packets everytime you get on a network to some central server you have waiting for you, let the server assemble them and resend.

Most 802.11 hardware uses a "network key" that's similar in function to a workgroup or domain. Without the key, you don't get in. Now if the person who's setting it up doesn't bother to set that key, then it'll be open like that one in Starbucks was. I should think that around the SF Bay area though, most admins are a bit more hip to the game.

Back when 802.11 was new, I was doing help desk for a dot-com that used AiroNet hardware (now Cisco) for the exec's with laptops. Their (now defunct) hardware refered to it as something weird like "airpath name" to which ours (was) set to "treeline"... If your laptop wasn't setup in the "treeline" group, you wouldn't get any signal.

As for finding rouge networks, I think it ought to be as simple as setting up some keep-alive program to alert you whenever you have a workable internet connection. Then all you have to do is pull over and broadcast your pirate signal into the matrix... *cough* *gack* (sorry... couldn't resist)

*edit* I just remembered... some admins weren't too bright: They left the key empty and were "surprised" to find that people were "hacking" into their unsecured networks over the airwaves while walking around outside.

that is soooo funny! My friend Riley was talking about htis today actually! He called it "wireless fishing"

Car
1964 Ford Falcon powered by a 1993 Mustang 5.0 EFI, AOD transmission, with disc brakes up front and more mechanical goodiesThe Player
Gone! Soon goign to repalce the screen based system i HAD with an iPod. http://mp3falcon.crazyshaxs.com

You're right about only being in range for a few seconds. That's why I'm not sure how plausible it is. If I parked in front of an office building, no problem. But going 70 down IH-35 isn't going to work.

Yea, PC magazine had an article. Evidently only 38% of networks in their random testing had the encryption enabled. (they found like 800 total networks) I am definatly thinking of trying this idea out once i get some 802.11b hardware.

I just want you to know that i hate you all now not only do i have to get a gps reciever, i need a 802.11 receiver, and figure out how to do it all with only two pci slots (for which 4 devices will be vying, wired nic, wireless nic, rocketport serial card, sblive ).

-Nick

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